Questions, Ideas and Opinions

How the Grand Outdated Party can Catch Up to the Times

A lot is being said this week about the election, and the “soul searching” that the Republican Party needs to do. Here’s a suggestion for how the GOP can get back on track in America… D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

Divorce the Party… from the racists. Not only are there not enough of them anymore to get you elected, as Lindsey Graham aptly pointed out well before this election, but there’s more people of color than ever before, not to mention more educated people than ever before. Educated people, as a rule, reject racism, the exception being Empire. Educated people also see through shams, like dismantling Pell grants and public education in favor of vouchers to “white only” religious schools.

Divorce the Party… from the Evangelical Dogmatists. They cost you big votes this year, from the alternative attraction communities (LGBT), to those who need insurance to pay for medications, and most importantly from those who are female. That’s a lot of votes that won’t be changing as long as your social policies and platforms are based in the 2nd century BCE. There’s a reason that the First Amendment was first. As long as you try to make a religious state out of America you’ll be wanting for votes. The GOP was here and successful way before the Moral Majority. Let them go their own way, wearing their own blinders.

In this day of internet and Twitter and 24 hour news cycles, of daily images from Mars and the other side of the Universe, of bacteria and viruses and Higgs bosons… having an anti-science, anti-fact stance represents the essence of the flat-earther, the Luddite, the denier of progress. Who is going to vote for that in the 2nd millennium? Evangelical dogma helped bring you down, and will keep you there.

Divorce the Party… from serving only the wealthy and corporate. 1% can’t win a democratic election, even with bought Supreme Court Justices who rule that corporations are people and money is speech. The wealthy and corporate have always done well in America, even if occasionally needing to be reined in, ala Teddy Roosevelt.

Ask yourselves, does screaming about government regulations in an age of deaths from e.coli on fruits and vegetables, deaths from fungus in prescription medications, deaths from cars that don’t brake, or that accelerate wildly out of control… does arguing against regulations to prevent these from happening make any sense at all when it comes to governance? How long has it been since a car manufacturer sold us a deathtrap that rolled over unexpectedly, or whose gas tank exploded from minor collisions? Those regulations apparently worked, yet the companies stayed in business and profited.

So what’s that leave for Republicans?

How about a more middling road to travel, one that can still be based on values, as long as they are inclusive ones?

It’s a road that can be fiscally conservative and still make money for the ‘job creators’ while rebuilding the infrastructure of the Country. A platform that invests in workers via education and training, in infrastructure via roads and bridges, in sustainability by ensuring that we don’t kill our environment while harvesting it’s riches… that’s a platform that many could support, all the while making the corporate wealthier.

Eisenhower did the Interstate Highway system, arguably the best roads in any of the lower 48 States. That’s the last good thing that I can think of that a Republican administration has done for America. The ones since have been doing to America, not for.

It’ll be a messy divorce to be sure, but all parties, America included, will be better off as a result.

And the big upside for the GOP is that your candidates won’t have to lie like dogs every time they appear in public.